Well,
this is the day that everyone has been talking about...rain all day long! The forecast shows from the middle of last
night then continuing throughout the day.
Mother Nature didn’t get the memo about that...woke to signs that it had
rained during the night but it was not raining at 7:30 a.m. It’ll probably be cloudy all day but no sign
of rain as of 9 a.m.
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I was bird watching up by the clubhouse and
noticed some bird shenanigans going on. A
pair of house sparrows were in and out of the nest hole guarded earlier by the
starlings. THEN this same pair of
sparrows flitted down the hole they normally occupy. I saw both of them fly back and forth so I know it’s
the same birds. Unless there are many
types of birds stacked up on the inside of that cactus and they're randomly flying
in and out of the holes. Now there’s a
thought.
Bird identification is not a strong suit of
mine...I can’t remember from one season to the next what species of birds come
into our feeder. Kim, however, has a
good memory for birds. I assumed it was cactus wrens I had been watching this
morning but when I googled a wren image it was not at all like the picture I
had taken. Kim did a search based on what
he remembered about types of beaks and thought maybe it was a house
sparrow. Found a good image, compared it
to mine and voila! it was a match. So it’s
house sparrows who are confused about what doorway to use in the cactus condo.
The gila woodpecker was in and out of the
third nest hole...no peeking into other holes today.
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Today was a good day for an adventure. Sky
looked threatening enough that a bike ride was out of the question so we jumped
in to the truck to find Picacho Mountain.
Picacho Peak is a well-known rock/landmark in these parts and we can see
it from our campsite. Ryan told us about
Picacho Mountain which we’d never heard about.
When he mentioned petroglyphs it was game on for me. He said it was over on the north side of I-10
then gave us somewhat sketchy directions. But that’s okay I’ve got Google.
Found Picacho Mountain Petroglyphs on a
hiking website where people left reviews; one review gave what I thought was
good navigational help. Kim followed the
directions as I read them off. All was
going good until we were faced with the proverbial fork in the road with no
help from the directions I was following.
We went to the right and eventually found the cow gate that we had to
open and close...Well, it might not look
like an official cow gate but it has the correct signage mentioned here in the
directions so this must be the way. It took about another three miles down
a very sketchy road (road condition was also mentioned in the directions) before
we figured out we were misplaced...not lost, just misplaced. I was finally able to access Rapunzel from
the hiking website and she directed us back to the fork where we went to the
left. Two more miles on another
questionable road and then Rapunzel said, “Your
destination will be on the right”. Sure enough, she’d led us to the correct
pile of rocks with the petroglyphs.
We spent about a ½ hour wandering around
then had no problem retracing our route in; rain started about 2:30 in the
afternoon when we were safely back on paved road. So we found the petroglyphs and avoided the possibility
of getting stuck in a flash flood. Success!
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Another car pulled up at the petroglyph rock
mountain few minutes after us; the twenty something kid that got out with an
older couple looked bored as he stretched but in an instant he was bounding up
the rocks like a mountain goat. Kim and
I also climbed to the top but took a much different route. The view from the top was definitely worth
the climb.
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I've read that these petroglyphs are over 800 years old; there were at least two markings on rocks that obviously didn’t belong among the rock pictures of ancient people...1983 and T + F. Really?! What possesses people to do
that?
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On a lark I grabbed my phone to see if there
were any geocaches in the vicinity. Yes,
indeed, there was one about 370 ft from where we were parked. Kim found it as I was reading “This cache is on State Trust Land which was
recently opened to geocaching by Governor Ducey. Persons wishing to access the cache need a
State Trust Land Permit....” Apparently
the petroglyphs are on state land and a permit is necessary to just drive out there. Oops!! We didn't know that.
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While
it did rain today, it certainly was not the all day affair that had been
predicted. Longest stretch of rain was
maybe an hour and a half.
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Bingo night at the Picacho KOA! All four of us went up to join in the
fun. I even managed to win a game. Yay!
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Random
Conversation of the Day:
I was waiting in line for the bathroom at
the Pilot gas station...toilet flushed and a tiny older Asian woman comes
scurrying out saying, “Glad I got my gloves on”. She holds her hands up to show that she has
on surgical gloves as she repeats, “Got my gloves on” as she heads directly out
the door. In the meantime from behind
another stall door a voice calls out, “Well, you still hafta wash your hands.” An employee emerges saying, “You know darn
well she didn’t take those gloves off when she went to the bathroom and if she
didn’t wash her hands...” “No, she didn’t wash her hands...she just
boogied out the door.” “Oh,
great! She didn’t wash her hands and now she’s going to go out there and touch
stuff on the shelf with her nasty gloved hands,” she muttered as she walked out
the door. 😠
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Hamburgers on the grill with Willie and Ann
tonight after Bingo.
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